On Wednesday, May 5th 2004, when Bl(A)ck Tea Society members arrived for their scheduled meeting on the MIT campus, they were greeted by two armed and uniformed Cambridge police officers (one of which illegally refused to identify himself), the chief of the MIT campus police, and a plainclothed agent (who also refused to identify himself, but one of the the other officers referred to as Mike). They were guarding and blocking the door to our reserved room, denying us the meeting space we have used for months before.

Police
Shut Down Bl(A)ck Tea Society Meeting at MITWritten by Gene and Andrew
from the BTS

On Wednesday, May 5th 2004, when
Bl(A)ck Tea Society members arrived for their scheduled meeting on the
MIT campus, they were greeted by two armed and uniformed Cambridge
police officers (one of which illegally refused to identify himself),
the chief of the MIT campus police, and a plainclothed agent (who also
refused to identify himself, but one of the the other officers referred
to as Mike). They were guarding and blocking the door to our reserved
room, denying us the meeting space we have used for months before.

Bl(A)ck Tea Society members were
never informed of any such cancellation of our room reservation. When
asked about the matter, Chief of MIT campus police John DiFava refused
to identify who was responsible for shutting the meeting space down, or
even who directed him to block the entrance. However, in the last
weeks, sources say that Kerry's Secret Service has visited the MIT
campus multiple times to convince (or to simply inform) MIT officials
that they should not allow the Bl(A)ck Tea Society, an expressly
non-violent group, to meet on their premises. This is part of a larger
pattern, according to the Boston Herald, the Secret Service has also
visited Georgia, to pressure institutions not to host activists
organizing for the upcoming G8 summit. The MIT administration had
decided that the Bl(A)ck Tea Society were not to enter the scheduled
meeting room, or have any other meetings on MIT property, under threat
of police arrest.

While surveillance and harassment
targeting activist groups from law enforcement agencies is nothing new,
as we approach the summer conventions there has been an increasing rate
of incidents like this against area activists. It seems that the
intense state repression targeting Boston activists protesting the
Democratic National Convention has already begun. These tactics
employed by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies are
designed to intimidate activists out of legally organizing to exercise
their first amendment rights.

These kind of police tactics meant
to intimidate and deter us will not accomplish their goals. As other
local community and labor groups, as well as national organizations
planning their own actions to counter the DNC, the Bl(A)ck Tea Society
will continue to plan for it's three pronged approach to the Democratic
National Convention;

We urge anyone interested in
helping us in these efforts to check our website, http://www.blackteasociety.org,
and come to one of our weekly meetings. Let's show the powers that be
that despite their attempts, we WILL NOT be intimidated into ending our
organizing!

Being clandestine has nothing to do with it. The more openly you operate, the harder it is for police to accuse you of shit. Yes, you need to be careful of provocateurs and disruptors, but that can be done with a clear set of action guidelines and expectations.

I've honestly seen more problems come from people being obsessed with security culture and failing to organize as a result than I've seen come from organizing openly.

That's not to say that police won't come. But the BTS is already pretty public, and the cops are clearly watching them. The answer is to have good public responses (which reach outside the narrow bounds of Indymedia readers). A small group that people don't know about is easy for cops to paint as violent, isolate, and crush.

I agree that openness is important--it is, in fact, one of our best defenses. An affinity group planning something illegal (even just a banner drop) obviously needs to be security conscious, but I think larger groups begin to get themselves in trouble when they become too security conscious. As Ummm... said, if you're open and communicating with the surrounding community, it's much harder for the police, Secret Service, FBI and whoever else to paint a nasty picture of you. Also, it's much harder to build the movement if the organizations that make it up are all so security conscious that it's difficult for new-comers to get involved. When you're planning stuff, as a general rule, assume that you're infiltrated--a friend of mine who was active then says this is how anti-war groups operated during the 60s. Don't try to spend your trying to guess who the cop is--that may just tear your group apart--but assume the authorities are going to find out what you're doing. If you're planning something that must absolutely be clandestine, it's probably a bad idea. Although the Bush administration clearly wants to lead us down that path, this is not a police state yet.

All that said, this stinks. I wish universities would take the idea of intellectual freedom a little more seriously and not allow themselves to be intimidated by the government so easily. But, of course, MIT's in thick with the military-industrial complex.

Might I point out that it is not uncommon for two people to witness the same thing and remember it very differently? Human memory is quirky and affected by all sorts of things, including our beliefs, social background, how we were involved in events, who we talked to, etc. You needn't jump to the conclusion that one or the other of you is lying simply because you recall the same event differently.

the last two posts from yesterday are gone. one was from someone who said they were thier and disagreed with the story, the other from someone also claiming to have been thier but who agreed with the story. what happened to these? why were they deleted?

I hid the posts because of the profanity. Granted, the two responses did not contain profanity, but I felt they were superfluious after the original was hidden. I've put them back up, after receiving several requests. If the profanity returns, I will again hide the posts that are policy violations.

this is a great comment board- good work seeing the troll postings and a very important conversation about clandestine organizing. Anarchists must remain above ground and open, lest they fall into the same 'underground' rut that they were in from the red purges till the 1990's.
I've had problems with fakes using my name on the VT IMC and was very confused by it, it's interesting to see that this is a tactic being employed to slow us.
Shame on MIT and their elitist achademia nonsense.
See you all in the streets. . .

The officer is right handed and the handgun would be on his right side. the side you can't see in the picture. the baton on his laft hip is ain back of the ammunition magazine that has its cover unfastened. The baton is normally cross drawn with the dominant hand. sometimes when you take a piss in uniform the forearm catches on the magazine cover latch.